To:A. V. LUNACHARSKY

To Anat. Vas.

Published:First published in 1924.

      Sent from Geneva to the Isle of Capri (Italy).

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1974,

      Moscow,Volume 34,

      pages383-384.Translated:Clemens DuttTranscription\Markup:D. MorosPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

February 13, 1908

DearAn. Vas.,

YesterdayI sent you a short note about Bringmann.
I hasten to reply to your letter of February 11.

Idon’t quite understand why you should feel hurt by
my letter. Not on account of philosophy, surely!

Yourplan for a section ofbelles-lettresinProletaryand
for having A. M. run it is an excellent one, and pleases me exceedingly. I have
in fact been dreaming of making theliterature and criticismsection a
permanent feature inProletaryand having A. M. to run it. But I wasafraid, terribly afraid of making the proposal outright, as Ido
not knowthe nature of A. M.’s work (and his work-bent). If a man is busy
with an important work, and if this work would suffer from him being torn away
for minor things, such as a newspaper, and journalism, then it would be foolish
and criminal to disturb and interrupt him! That is something I very well
understand and feel.

Beingon the spot, you will know best, dear An. Vas.If you considerthat A. M.’s workwill not sufferby his being
harnessed to regular Party work (and the Party work will
gain a great deal from this!), then try to arrange it.

ProletaryNo. 21 will come out on February 13(26). So
there is still time. It is desirable to have the manuscripts
byFriday, which will give us plenty of time to put them in the issue
which comes out on Wednesday. If it’s some thing urgent we could manage it even
if the copy arrives on Sunday (to avoid delay, write and send it directly to my
address), or even (in an extreme case!) on Monday.

You,too, must write without fail. Won’t you send us for No. 21 either a
political article on Russian affairs (10,000-16,000 characters) or an article on
Fern’s
resignation[1](8,000-10,000 characters)? Better still,
not “either...or”, but “both...and”.

Isend you my best regards and ask you to reply whether
A. M.’s contribution toProtetaryis being arranged. If it
is, let him begin at once,without waitingfor the “meeting”
and an
agreement.[2]

[1]Thisrefers to the refusal of E. Ferri, leader of the centrist majority of
the Italian Socialist Party, to edit the Party’s Central OrganAvanti!. Lunacharsky’s article “The Crisis in the Italian Workers
Party” was published inProletaryNo. 23, for March 11 (February 27), 1908.

[2]Thereference is to a meeting on Capri, sponsored by Gorky, which was
to have been attended by Lenin, Bogdanov, Bazarov, Lunacharsky and
Skvortsov-Stepanov to discuss questions of publishing activities and
theoretical questions. The meeting took place in April 1908
(Skvortsov-Stepanov did not attend; he came to Geneva for a week to
meet Lenin). Lenin mentions it in his “A Letter to Students at the
Capri Party School” dated August 30, 1909^^(see Vol. 15 of this
edition)^^.